Anyone else notice how many of the examples on this page are actually Ad Break Double Takes?
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I didn't. That trope can be used for other reasons as well, though.
"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." - Richard Feynman.jpg_100.jpeg)
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Additional potential justification: if the character on-screen is connecting the dots, it can be useful to show their thought process. Sometimes the connection isn't obvious to the average viewer. (And sometimes it is, but TV producers might want to play it safe, which wouldn't be a case of Viewers Are Goldfish so much as Viewers Are Dense. But anyway...) Showing a thought process is tricky: you can show your character's furrowed brow and/or eye-opening expression and hope for the best, you can have the character mutter something ("The eagle's eggs! That's the boy's weak spot!"), which sometimes rings false, or you can use an audio-visual cue, a category into which the flashback belongs.
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Changing the name of the Viewers Are Goldfish trope seems in good order. While the stereotype is well known, it's been proven for some time that Goldfish do have a memory.
I suggest we change it to Viewers Are Women.
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Supposedly, hamsters are the actual animal with the shortest memory, so Viewers are Hamsters would be a much better choice, since Viewers Are Women sounds like a show that has female-oriented humor, excessive cuteness, and/or frequent fanservice depicting men in lady-oriented ways.
The "3 minute attention span" derives from an ancient survey that Americans chage TV channels 20 times/hour on average. They never considered that most channels put adverts on at the same time. You are watching your show; the adverts come on, you see if anything is on the other channels; the other channel broadcasts advert at the same time, so you change channels again and again.
I never knew that... that tidbit should be in the article, for sure.
My original Viewers are Hamsters suggestion would be more factual, but Goldfish will probably stay because, hey, it beats having to say "Viewers are Amnesiacs" or "Viewers have Short Attention Spans"...
Previous Trope Repair Shop thread: Complaining
, started by captainpat on Apr 10th 2012 at 5:01:05 AM
"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." - Richard Feynman